NPO CRM solutions?

[lobo]

Announcing CiviCRM 1.2
----------------------

We are pleased to announce the latest release of CiviCRM, version 1.2! CiviCRM is a web-based, open source, internationalized, constituent relationship management (CRM) application, designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental organizations.  As an open source solution, any company, organization or individual can download it, adapt it, modify it and use it without paying license fees.

CiviCRM is currently intended for qualified consultants who are considering deployment of a CRM solution for small to medium-sized non-profits. Organizations considering CiviCRM to meet specific needs should carefully evaluate CiviCRM.

(You can read this announcement - with nicer formatting - at http://www.openngo.org)

Some Key Benefits of Deploying CiviCRM
--------------------------------------

-  Unified view of every constituent. Store information about individuals, organizations and households and your interactions with them.

-  Designed for Advocacy/NPO/NGOs.  CiviCRM was designed for organizations that engage in advocacy, community and political organizing, and non-profit work.

-  Seamless integration with web sites. CiviCRM integrates directly into popular open source CMS packages, including Drupal and Mambo.  Registration and visitor interactions are logged directly into the system, including end-user maintenance of their own addresses and custom fields.

-  Internationalized & Localized.  CiviCRM was built from the ground up as a product intended to be used globally.  It can store data in many localized formats and supports most languages globally.

-  Open source & open standards. Licensed under the AGPL,  users can make any modification to the software, can benefit from modifications made by others and can effectively interoperate with other applications.

-  Affordable and cost effective. CiviCRM is available without a license fee and is supported by a community of nonprofit-focused consultants.


What's new with 1.2?
--------------------

-  Improved Data Import/Export.  Import and export virtually any CiviCRM data field or set with an easy-to-use interface.

-  Improved "Profile" handling.  We've optimized the display performance of our search.  You can now search contacts quickly and efficiently.  You can also now search on and display any CiviCRM field.

-  Improved API.  We've implemented additional API calls including search, group membership, custom fields and more.  Remote access via SOAP is now supported.

-  CiviMail.  High volume mass emailing capabilities with the ability to track click-thrus and open rates.  (Developer Release)


Demo, Downloads and Documentation
---------------------------------
-  Test drive CiviCRM 1.2 on our demo site: http://demo.openngo.org/civicrm/drupal-php5/

-  To download CiviCRM, please go to: http://downloads.openngo.org/civicrm/

-  Installation instructions can be found here: http://objectledge.org/confluence/displ ... tion+Guide

-  Our Documentation can be found here: http://objectledge.org/confluence/displ ... umentation


CiviCRM in a Nutshell
---------------------

CiviCRM is a web-based CRM application that can be downloaded and installed either locally on a server, or in a hosted environment.  It can be used as a powerful contact database application that allows you to record and manage information about your various constituents including volunteers, activists, donors, employees, clients, vendors, etc.  Keep track of conversations, events or any type of correspondence with each constituent and store it all in one, easily accessible and manageable source.


Technical Requirements:

  -  Runs on any platform that supports:
      -  PHP 4.3+
      -  MySQL 4.0 or 4.1
      -  Drupal 4.6.3+ or Joomla 1.0.3+/Mambo4.5.3
        -  Joomla/Mambo version of CiviCRM only supports PHP4 at this time


Key Features in Detail:

-  Segmentation Tools.  Use groups, simple and searchable tags, and/or relationships to segment constituents.

-  Extensive Configurability.  CiviCRM is highly configurable, allowing you, in most cases, to configure it to work with your existing business processes. Unlimited locations, addresses, phone numbers, emails and custom data fields allow most unique needs to be met.

-  Contacts. Store common nonprofit contact data (individuals, organizations, and households) that support donor management, case management, voter, and advocacy applications.

-  Relationships. Understand the relationships between any two contacts with standard (volunteer, employer, head of household) relationships or create your own unique custom relationship types.

-  Activities. Record standard activities (phone call, meeting, email) for any contact or create your own custom activities that meet your needs. External software can use the CiviCRM Application Programming Interface (API) to register activities with any contact, providing a comprehensive central repository of CRM information.

-  Smart Groups. Create smart groups based on any search criteria or create standard groups that are simply lists of contacts. The membership of a smart group changes automatically according to that moment's search results.

-  Custom Data. Create unlimited custom data fields in virtually any format, including radio buttons, drop-down menus, etc. All custom fields are searchable and can define a smart group.

-  Internationalization & Localization. CiviCRM can store CRM data in many localized formats and supports most languages, currently including Brazilian Portuguese, German, Polish and Spanish.

-  Support Multi-site Organizations and Networks. Centrally store data across multiple organizations or web sites.

-  Import and export functionality with de-dupe. Import functionality intelligently maps CiviCRM fields to imported data and checks for duplicates based on user-defined criteria.

-  Robust permissioning. With Drupal integration, access to certain groups of contacts can be limited to specific users, offering a way for volunteers to manage small portions of a larger CiviCRM database.

-  Website Integration. CiviCRM is integrated with both Drupal and Joomla!/Mambo. Web site registrations automatically become CiviCRM records and individuals can maintain their own CRM record. Offerings like CivicSpace 0.8.2 integrate e-mail blasts, event, volunteer and petition functionality with CiviCRM.

-  Application Programming Interface (API). A fully documented API exposing all major functionality of CiviCRM.  For instance, you can search the database, register interactions with constituents, create or update contact information, etc.  This allows CiviCRM to realistically be a central repository of virtually any nonprofit's CRM information.


Future Releases
---------------

CiviCRM is in active development and is constantly improving.  Some key features to look for are:

-  CiviMail is now available in 1.2 as a developer release.  In future releases, we will update this high-capacity email broadcast tool with a friendly user interface.

-  CiviCRM 1.3 will include CiviDonate, a donor management module and online donations solution.


About the Social Source Foundation
-----------------------------------

The Social Source Foundation is a 501-c-3 nonprofit creating internationalized, open source software of uncompromising quality for the nonprofit and nongovernmental sectors. Social Source Foundation is one of many partners in the creation of the CiviCRM platform, providing primary engineering support for the software.

[geilhufe]

I'm surprised by the lack of mention for one of the premier Non-Profit software providers in the industry.  I sit on the board of a couple of non-profits, and regularly interact with others at similar organizations.  Many of the larger non-profit organziations use products form Blackbaud, Inc. (http://www.blackbaud.com).  They're a premier provider with solutions dedicated to effective fundraising. 

One of the reasons that the major nonprofit software solutions are seldom mentioned in the context of open source content management solutions like Joomla is the commercial products are generally not interoperable. Blackbaud, Convio, Kintera, and Get Active all have their own content management systems... they generally want nonprofits to buy their solutions rather than alternative content management systems. This is changing very slowly.

Other solutions (Mission Research Giftworks, Telosa Exceed, DonorPerfect) are primarily designed as desktop applications and have similar interoperability challenges.

All these solutions, though, do a great job of donor management along with lots of other stuff.

david geilhufe
Try CiviCRM! (http://www.openngo.org/)

[ccrystle]

GiftWorks, btw, is in fact interoperable. It's a hybrid of desktop and web services, can host AJAX, is easy to code to, and will have a full SDK in early 2006. The presentation layer is open source, and there are other parts of the app we'll likely open up as well. Anyone can build an installer-less module (seamless install) that plugs into the framework, and can take advantage of the web-desktop API.

Thanks for listening.

[mcsmom]

Products like Blackbaud are way to expensive for small nonprofits that want to keep fundraising percentages low.

[ccrystle]

GiftWorks is only $299, very easy to use and learn...

[Onlyeyes]

alot of them also charge very high per-donation fees to use their fundraising components.

[ccrystle]

I know--like 8%! I don't see the value add. Here's a really great study about online donations, just released:

http://www.idealware.org/donations/intro.php

[Onlyeyes]

that report was very interesting.  I have also run across some companies that charge as high as 8% per donation.

[lobo]

Speaking of donations, CiviCRM 1.3 will incorporate a pretty cool contribution frontend (modelled along the lines of groundspring's donatenow).

You can plugin different payment processor backends (initially we will support paypal pro), so your costs are kept pretty low. (credit card processing does not get much cheaper than paypal)

you can read more about it at:

http://objectledge.org/confluence/displ ... cification

lobo

[chay]

Speaking of donations, CiviCRM 1.3 will incorporate a pretty cool contribution frontend (modelled along the lines of groundspring's donatenow).

You can plugin different payment processor backends (initially we will support paypal pro), so your costs are kept pretty low. (credit card processing does not get much cheaper than paypal)

you can read more about it at:

http://objectledge.org/confluence/displ ... cification

lobo

Hi Lobo. I'm eagerly looking forward to this -- and I have a couple of questions. Will I be able to use it with "Payments Standard" so as to avoid the upcoming $20/mo fee in 2006?  Will the Joomla! CiviCRM 1.3 component come out at the same time?

[lobo]

hey chay:

we are targeting the "Web Standards Pro" for the first release which allows both sending the user to paypal and accepting cc directly on your site. I suspect adding support for the other paypal features will be relatively easy. It will not be our main focus for 1.3 however

I dont think we'll have the front end component ready for Joomla! in 1.3. We are targetting that for 1.4

note that having short release cycles means we target one main feature at a time

lobo

[mcsmom]

GiftWorks is only $299, very easy to use and learn...

Which is way more than I have paid for my whole joomla! installation and  a year of hosting somewhere even with a few commercial add ons..

[ccrystle]

Right--I assume you're a dev, though, and I don't think you're counting or valuing your time and other costs related to custom development. There are a lot of reasons to do custom dev for a nonprofit, but there are a lot of reasons not to do it, too. It can be a very costly sinkhole. If you've spent any more than 5 hours getting it to where you want it or adding stuff in, then $299 starts to look pretty good.

But this is apples and oranges--GiftWorks is packaged, off-the-shelf software.

[mcsmom]

Nope, a volunteer. And they do not have the money to hire a dev and, believe me I've tried, the amount of consensus building it would take to agree to move a complex, 10,000 record data base that includes alumni records, school records and other items would be even more expensive than the time it takes to figure out civicrm for my little piece.  For many organizations single purpose software is a problem. That's why Blackbaurd, if you are raising $10M a year is perhaps a good investment, it is well integrated with the accounting packages and they probably also have full time IT staff.

You should understand that the vast majoirty of NPO sites are run by volunteers I'm sure i'm not the only person upgrading this weekend. .

[ccrystle]

Oh I totally understand. Before I started Mission Research I volunteered fulltime for Witness.org. I built a lot of great stuff, I thought, anyway, but every little bug was catostrophic to them, even the quick fixes, so in my case I was part of the problem.

Blackbaud costs tens of thousands. You can do pretty well with a blog, GiftWorks integrated with QuickBooks, PayPal (or some other online donation solution...we're offering one soon), etc. Volunteer management and school-specific apps are tougher to build generically, though I know some of our competitors have taken a crack at it. But they tend to not be commercial developers and build with FoxPro of all things.

CiviCrm is very cool. There's a ton of open source stuff that's awesome (check out sourceforge.net if you get a chance, and aspin.net). But for donor management/mailing/relationship management, it's tough to be GiftWorks for the price, ease of use, and interface. here's a hassle-free download (no forms) http://www.missionresearch.com/downloads2

[mcsmom]

Reading that report makes me wonder again why it wouldn't make sense to us an ecommerce solution for processing donations as well. For example, couldn't I use my virtuemart also to to take donations?

For our silent auction I let people pay online by buying "auction dollars." If they had items worth $100 then they ould buy 100 auction dollars and it worked really well.

[lobo]

mcsmom:

you potentially can use use your ecommerce solution (and i suspect lots of organizations do so). However having something tailored for donation processing, allow you to do a few nice things like:

1. Simplified processing for people who just want to donate. Clear process etc

2. Allows the system to send email receipts for tax purposes, can figure out the "gift" value of the donation etc

3. Allows recurring donations

the above features come at a fairly decent price from groundspring.org ($20/month). CiviContribute will have integration with paypal (so can be free / $20 depending on what u want).

lobo

[mcsmom]

Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking ouloud about what to do between now and whenever there is a clear donation module that will let me do this.  I don't want to pay etapestry $350. So for now I guess I'll stay with network for good for now. 

[Onlyeyes]

Has there been any discussion of combining Civic CRM as a plug-in for the new version of community builder ?  It seems like the two systems together would be quite powerful indeed.

[mohpa]

Has there been any discussion of combining Civic CRM as a plug-in for the new version of community builder ?  It seems like the two systems together would be quite powerful indeed.

I guess the "plug-in" integration is a no-go (as far as I can determine). CiviCRM will be hooked into the Joomla user-database via the new user bots in version 1.1. I was also hoping for a CB + CivicCRM integration. That would really be a powerfull solution.

[lobo]

mohpa:

We'll be happy to support and help you if you think there is power to the CRM + CB solution. Would be great for folks who think that this will be useful and powerful to actually step up and do the integration Both CiviCRM and CB come with fairly powerful API / plug-in architectures

lobo

[mohpa]

Thank you lobo for your input. Although, I am by no means a coding pro, I am really tempted to see what the whole API architecture entails, in regards to the CB and CiviCRM integration.
I am looking for a solution that would bring my organization out of proprietary software and annual taxes (mainly Blackbaud products), and be flexible in what and how we do things. CivicCRM is shaping into a very powerful platform for NPO's and addresses my needs, and I look forward to future releases.

[chay]

Hi Lobo,

You could add me to the list of people who would like a CiviCRM + CB integration. 

[lobo]

Can we start making a list of people who will work on the integration 

lobo

[cozimek]

Hey everyone,

Ok, a couple quick points here to keep this thread moving in the right direction:

1) Commercial posts
I've been leanient in keeping posts by some that have their commercial software and pricing for it on this thread.  Unfortunately, this is expressly prohibited by the forum rules: "No commercial advertising is permitted. Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING"  I don't believe posts here were spam, but it certainly was advertising and self-promotion.  Let's just cut this out of our discussions, and consider using email to keep to the rules instead.

2) CiviCRM - CB integration
We've (PICnet) has heavily researched the opportunity to integrate CiviCRM and CB, and after a lot of looking at the code, other examples of CB integration, it just didn't make sense for us to continue down this path.  From our standpoint, it really seems to be duplicating efforts when Joomla 1.1 will include user-bots that can handle the synching and data integration we need to do for CiviCRM - Joomla integration.

3) CiviCRM - Joomla integration
Before we start focusing on CiviCRM - CB integration, I think we should focus our energies on CiviCRM - Joomla integration.  Why?  I don't believe that people should need to install two components (and a plugin) just to get CiviCRM to work out of the box.  If we focus our integration energy on CB, we're going to need to make CB a requirement for front-end connections from Joomla to CiviCRM.  A better way to go is to focus on the Joomla userbot and just follow the best practices of the CiviCRM's integration with Drupal.

4) Building the team
Ok, I'm sounding like a broken record.    We need to have a solid Joomla team of programmers (maybe just a couple) that can provide some time to help us with the CiviCRM integration with Joomla 1.1.  Props go to dmcole who stepped up to the task, but we need just a couple more people to get the ball rolling.

Please post to this thread if you're interested in joining us to make the front-end connection between Joomla and CiviCRM.

Ok, enough from me.  Thanks everyone for the great thread!

Best,
Ryan

[mcsmom]

Whatever I can do to help, I will.

But here's what seems to be the bigger issue: what is it that the front end is supposed to achieve?

It seems to me that a CRM system and a community system are not the same things, though they might have some functions in common (such as letting a contact update his or her own contact information from the front end). But to me a CRM system is more about managing/tracking relationships that are more, shall we say, outcomes oriented (i.e. getting donations, "enrollment management," doingtargetted communications of various types). It's about an organization on one side and its various constituents on the other.

Community software is more about building ties between constitutents--let me pm my classmates, post my blog and get comments etc.

Yes, many NPOs want both, but I don't think that one system will necessarily serve both purposes very well.

Given the core of a CMS, a component does not need to be nor should it be all things to all people. From my understanding of the approach taken by the Joomla! core developers they have deliberately not loaded the core up with a million different functions, but rather have chosen to let people pick and choose the ones they need.

[Onlyeyes]

I think I agree with MCSMOM.  Integrating CivicCRM and Joomla is of course the top priority, but that will leave out some of the features which attract non-profits and campaigns to the "community" element.  For example, the 'connections' tab in RC2 of CB, or the ability to make a forum or blog post and have that appear in your profile with your avatar.  It is not just the data integration, it is some of the additional features that it provides that won't be available even if CivicCRM and Joomla 1.1 worked well together.  People should be able to use it only with Joomla for as a CRM system but then ALSO be able use it with other components like CB if they desire additional features and want to install it. 

It is kind of like simpleboard. People can use it quite easily "out of the box" but if they want additional functionality, there are a variety of "plug-ins" for them to install such as CB and others. I'm just saying integrating civicCRM with Joomla is an important and necessary first step, but additional integration with other components on top of that should always be left open.

-andy

[lobo]

andy makes a valid point. From our drupal experience, CiviCRM is qutie nicely integrated with Drupal, but now we have quite a few modules that integrate both with Drupal and CiviCRM. examples include volunteer, mass mailer, petition, lobby, eventfinder etc (and the list is starting to grow). In these cases the modules deal with civicrm from a programmatic API only and the user does not know that part of the data is being stored in CiviCRM

what u want is a centralized DB for all your user / contact info and interactions and then have multiple modules/components interact with it in a fairly seamless manner.

lobo

[lobo]

(keeping with our theme of release early, release often).

Preview available for Drupal only. Code will work on mambo/joomla! also.

A first preview of CiviContribute is now available on our Sandbox server.  If you are interested in using this functionality - please take a 'test-drive'.

This installation is configured to support PayPal's  Website Pro service. The release will also support PayPal's Express service (which is cheaper and easier to setup - but requires contributors to create/use a PayPal account). CiviContribute is being architected to allow a variety of payment processor 'plug-ins'.  Joe Murray and Alan Dixon are building a Moneris plug-in which we expect will be available at release time!

Folks who are interested in working on additional plug-ins, and/or setting the code up now on their own servers should contact us.

Most of the specified phase 1 functionality is in place (although of course there are a few rough spots - notably we are finishing up currency display configurability so the amount displays are funky).

You can:
* Make a contribution using a sample online contribution page (as an anonymous browser or authenticated user) here:
http://sandbox.openngo.org/civicrm/drup ... set=1&id=1

NOTE: The Online Contribution form is pre-filled with a test credit card number, security code and expiration date. Do not change these values unless you want to try out a 'failure' case.

* Login to the sandbox (user=demo pw=demo) here:
http://sandbox.openngo.org/civicrm/drupal-php5/

* Configure a new Online Contribution Page here:
http://sandbox.openngo.org/civicrm/drup ... te?reset=1

* Search / view / edit contributions here:
http://sandbox.openngo.org/civicrm/drup ... ch?reset=1

We look forward to hearing your feedback on this list. As this is pre-release code, please do NOT submit bugs to our bug-tracking system yet.

We anticipate beta availability for CiviContribute with v1.3 by December 12.

lobo

[larpo]

Can this contribution functionality be reworked to achieve a subscriptions based annual fee membership system.

My organisation has a membership department that runs on a number of differently priced/coded membership types/subscriptions that are renewed annually. We would like to be able to process renewals automatically, and allow online subscription payments.

Any advice on whether CiviCRM can be made to function in this way would be extremely useful.